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DIY: Sneak Peak Project

I'm fixing up my son's closet!



The layout of my son's room was very...counterproductive, i guess you could say... The only wall in the room that could have held a normal sized bed for someone over the age of 5 has a double closet spanning the entire length of the wall. Now the ONLY heat vent in the room, and one of only 3 in the entire upstairs happened to be in that closet. A very poor placement, really.


Wanting to keep that space open to let the heat circulate throughout the room, it only made sense to just take the doors off and make it an extended play area. His room is still the coldest room in the house even after refilling some of the insulation a couple summers ago so I want to utilize that heat vent as much as possible.


But of course, I HAVE to make a project out of it because that's just who I am. Let's get to it, shall we?



First I removed the closet shelves. These were so old the plastic coating was falling off of one of them. Just a couple minutes with a power drill and they're gone. A little vacuuming and I'm good to go.


Next its patching the holes in the wall. The clips that were anchored into the wall were pretty much falling out so i just pulled them out. But because of that, they left dime sized holes in the wall. Not big enough to require anything crazy, just drywall mud.



I threw some mud on each of the holes, making sure it was flush with the rest of the wall, they left them to dry. The next day, i repeated the process. Day 3, i took my mudding spatula and just scraped off anything sticking out off the wall. The more professional alternative to this is to sand the wall down. I was pressed for time and to be honest didn't really give a shit because it was just a closet. It doesn't have to be perfect.


Next was time to prime. Aaaaaaaaaand in all the rush, i compLETEly forgot this. Seems to be a theme with me, huh? If you want to be less of a hack, don't skip priming.


Paint. I used the remaining Charcoal Grey paint from my sons room and mixed it with some paint I bought at Home Depot that was a couple shades darker. It was Glidden Dark Onyx in satin. Always do satin or eggshell finish for walls. I thought this color would be a cool contrast and give it some dimension as i shaded the edges and corners. I used the mixture for the majority of the wall, then the dark for the edges and blending it all together. I've taken note that this paint didn't blend well. Like once it was on the wall, there was no blending or spreading. It stayed put, making my whole plan pretty difficult. I'm wondering if it wasn't the brand of paint I used...


Notice the weird patches on the paint in the pics... that's from the spot mudding i did on the wall. Since the texture is different than the rest of the wall, this shows through the paint and is the reason you prime in this situation. AGAIN, with this being a closet in a kids room, I'm not giving too many shits here.



Now for this project, I wanted to do something really cool and unique. The best thing I could come up with was adding in a castle window. It seemed almost impossible when i first came up with the idea but the more i thought about it, the more possible it became for me.


After painting the walls the base color, i took some chalk and free handed a large castle window. Not 100% free hand though. I had to at least use a level to of course make sure the window was level and the architecture was centered. Because of what it is, it would be very obvious if it wasn't level and centered.



Getting the basis of the window done, it spent some time perfecting the picture. I had to wipe away lines, redraw, wipe away, redraw. Everything is still not exactly where i want it, but the lines will be cleaned up and solidified once i add the paint and detailing.



That's all for now! Next comes the paint, we'll see how well i do with that. It's been a hot second since I've done anything on a larger scale...




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